As it so happened, Attila liked to eat a little Rattus norvegicus for breakfast, and it was the king of the Oslo Municipal Sewer and Drainage System. That is to say, Attila thought it was, until now. Attila’s reign had started many years ago, but this water vole hadn’t always been king. When Attila was a few months old and was a cute, tiny fur ball weighing only a few ounces, it had been bought in a pet store by a family in Hovseter, Norway. They bought the Mongolian water vole because the fat little boy in the family had pointed at Attila and yelled that he wanted a rat like that. And his parents had done what the little boy ordered. They had fed Attila fish balls, the worst thing Attila knew of, and put a metal collar on the rat with the name ATTILA engraved on it, and the fat little boy had tormented the poor water vole every single day by poking sticks into the cage. Every single day, until the day Attila had gotten so big from eating fish balls that it needed a new cage while it could still fit out the opening of the old one. Attila had been looking forward to this day. And when the boy stuck his hand into the cage to drag Attila out, Attila had opened its mouth as wide as it could and sunk its teeth into the delicious, soft, white human meat. This was a totally different kind of meatball! And while the little boy screamed and his blood gushed, Attila was out of the cage, as fast as a Mongolian water vole could go, out of the apartment, away from the above-ground part of Hovseter and down into the sewer. And from there the water vole had found his way to downtown Oslo, where its beastly behavior had quickly earned the water vole respect. Attila was feared by Norwegian rats citywide, from the manhole covers at Majorstua subway station to the sewage treatment plant at Aker.
But on this night, deep beneath Oslo, while Lisa and Nilly were sleeping like babies, it was Attila who was gripped by fear. The vole was sitting in the corner of a sewer pipe, shaking. Because in a flash of light it had seen something right in front of him. A glimpse of teeth. Teeth even bigger than its own. Could the legend he’d been hearing for all these years in the Oslo Municipal Sewer and Drainage System be true after all? Attila felt its Mongolian water vole heart pounding in fear and it was so dark, so dark. And for the first time, Attila realized it actually smelled pretty bad down here in the sewer and that it really would prefer to be anywhere else besides this sewer pipe right now. Even its old cage in Hovseter. So Attila tried to comfort itself. Obviously the legend must be made up. An anaconda? What bologna. An anaconda is a boa constrictor that is found in the Amazon, where it lives off of huge water voles and such, not here deep beneath Oslo, where there aren’t any water voles at all. Apart from the one, that is. Attila contemplated this briefly.
And while the water vole was thinking, something moved toward Attila. It was huge, like an inflatable swim ring, surrounded by jagged teeth the size of ice-cream cones, and it was hissing and had such bad breath that the rest of the sewer smelled like a flower bed in comparison.
It was so frightening that Attila quite simply squeezed its eyes shut.
When the vole opened them again, something was dripping and dripping all around. And it was excessively dark. Just as if Attila weren’t sitting in a sewer pipe but inside something that was even darker. And it was as if the walls were moving, pulling in closer and slithering. As if the water vole were already inside the stomach of … of …
Attila screamed at least as loud as that fat little boy he had bitten so long ago.
Nilly Does Simple Math
WHEN LISA WALKED out the door the next morning, Nilly was standing across the street with his backpack on, kicking rocks.
“What are you waiting for?” Lisa asked.
Nilly shrugged and said, “To see if anyone walks by who’s going the same way as me.”
“No one’s going to come by,” Lisa said. “This is a dead-end street and we live at the end of it.”
“Well then,” Nilly said, and they started walking down Cannon Avenue together.
“Proctor invited us to come over after school for the Last Big Powder Test,” Nilly said. “Are you coming?”
“Of course,” Lisa said. “Are you excited?”
“As excited as a little kid,” said Nilly.
When they’d made it almost all the way down to the main road, Lisa stopped and pointed at the house at the bottom of Cannon Avenue.
“That’s where Truls and Trym live,” she said. “If I see them come out, I usually wait here until they’re gone. If I don’t see them, I run quickly past. Come on …”
Lisa took Nilly’s hand and was about to run, but Nilly held her back.
“I don’t want to run,” he said. “And I don’t want to wait, either.”
“But …,” Lisa began.
“Remember, there’s two of us,” Nilly said. “There’s just as many of us as Truls and Trym. At least. It’s simple math.”
So they walked past Truls and Trym’s house. Nilly was walking really, really slowly, Lisa thought. She could still tell that he was a little scared, though, because he was constantly looking over at the house. But luckily neither Truls nor Trym came out, and Lisa looked at her watch and realized they must have gone to school already.
“Do you know what time it is?” she exclaimed in alarm, because she was a good girl and wasn’t used to being late.
“I don’t have a watch,” Nilly said.
“Mrs. Strobe is going to be super pissed. Hurry!”
“Aye, aye, boss,” Nilly said.
And they ran so fast that they got there in the time it took you to read from the beginning of this chapter to here.
UNFORTUNATELY, TIME DIDN’T pass as quickly the rest of the day. Nilly was so impatient to get home for the Last Big Powder Test that he sat there in the classroom counting the seconds as he watched Mrs. Strobe’s mouth moving. He wasn’t paying attention, so when he suddenly realized that Mrs. Strobe was pointing at him and that everyone else in class was looking at him, Nilly figured that Mrs. Strobe had probably asked him a question.
“Two thousand six hundred and eighty-one,” Nilly said.
Mrs. Strobe wrinkled her brow and asked, “Is that supposed to be the answer to my question?”
“Not necessarily,” Nilly said. “But that’s how many seconds have passed during this class. Well, now four more have gone by, so now two thousand six hundred and eighty-five seconds have passed. It’s simple math.”
“I understand that,” Mrs. Strobe started. “But Nilly …”
“Excuse me. That isn’t the right answer anymore,” Nilly said. “The right answer is now two thousand six hundred and eighty-nine.”
“To me, it sounds like you’re trying to talk your way out of what I asked you about,” Mrs. Strobe said. “Because you heard what I asked you, right, Nilly?”
“Of course,” Nilly said. “Two thousand six hundred ninety-two.”
“Get to the point,” Mrs. Strobe said, sounding a little irritated now.
“The point,” Nilly said, “is that since there are sixty seconds in a minute and forty-five minutes in each class, I won’t have time to answer your question, since sixty seconds times forty-five is two thousand seven hundred seconds, and that means the bell is going to ring right …”
No one heard the rest of what Nilly said, because the bell started ringing right then, loud and shrill. Mrs. Strobe tried looking sternly at Nilly, but when she yelled, “All right, everyone out!” he could see that she couldn’t quite help but smile anyway.
AFTER LISA AND Nilly had spent sixteen thousand and two hundred seconds together in the classroom and two thousand seven hundred seconds on the playground, they ran away from the school as quickly as they had run toward it. They parted on Cannon Avenue, each opening their own gate, each running up their own front steps, and each flinging their backpack in their own hallway. Then they met again in front of Doctor Proctor’s gate.
“I’m almost dreading it a little,” Lisa said.
“I’m almost looking forward to it a little,” Nilly said.
Then they stormed into the yard and through the tall grass.
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“There you guys are!” called the doctor joyfully in his remarkable accent. He was sitting at the picnic table under the pear tree. In front of him lay three tablespoons and a teaspoon, an ice hockey helmet, two knee pads, a mason jar full of powder, a pair of motorcycle pants, and a two-foot-long, rectangular, homemade Jell-O bathed in caramel sauce. “Are you guys ready for the Last Big Powder Test?” he asked.
“Yes!” Lisa and Nilly shouted in unison.
“But first, Jell-O,” said the doctor.
They sat down around the table and each grabbed a spoon.
“On your mark, get set …,” Doctor Proctor said.
“Go!” Nilly yelled, and they flung themselves at the Jell-O. If Nilly had been counting, he wouldn’t have gotten any further than thirty seconds before the two-foot-long Jell-O had vanished completely.
“Good,” Nilly said, patting his stomach.
“Good,” Lisa said, patting her stomach.
“I’ve made a few tiny adjustments to the powder mixture,” Doctor Proctor said.
“I’m ready,” Nilly said, taking the lid off the mason jar.
“Hold on!” the professor said. “I don’t want you to ruin your pants again, so I made these.”
He held up the motorcycle pants. They were very normal, aside from the fact that the seat of the pants had a Velcro flap.
“So the air can pass through unobstructed,” the doctor explained. “I remodeled my old motorcycle gear.”
“Niiice,” Nilly said once he’d put on the pants, which were way too big for him. Lisa just shook her head.
“These, too,” the doctor said, and passed Nilly the hockey helmet and the knee pads. “In case you get knocked over again.”
Nilly put everything on, then crawled up onto the table and over to the mason jar.
“Only one teaspoon!” Doctor Proctor yelled.
“Yeah, yeah!” Nilly said, filling the spoon he was holding in his hand and sticking it into his mouth.
“Okay,” the doctor said, looking at his watch. “We’ll start the countdown then. Seven. Six.”
“Doctor Proctor … ,” Lisa said warily.
“Not now, Lisa. Nilly, hop down from the table and stand over there so you don’t ruin anything. Four. Three,” the doctor continued.
“He didn’t use the teaspoon,” Lisa practically whispered.
“Two,” the doctor said. “What did you say, Lisa?”
“Nilly used that big tablespoon he ate his Jell-O with,” Lisa said.
The doctor stared at Lisa with big, horrified eyes. “One,” he said. “Tablespoon?”
Lisa nodded.
“Oh no,” Doctor Proctor said, running toward Nilly.
“What now?” Lisa whispered.
“Simple math,” Nilly yelled happily. “Zero.”
And then came the bang. And if the earlier bangs had been loud, they were nothing compared to this. This was as if the whole world had exploded. And the air pressure! Lisa felt how her eyelids and lips distorted as she was peppered with dirt and pebbles.
When her eyes settled back into place, the first thing Lisa noticed was that the birds had stopped singing. Then she noticed Doctor Proctor, who was sitting in the grass with a confused look on his face. The leaves from the big pear tree wafted down around him as if it were suddenly fall. But she didn’t see Nilly. She looked to the right, to the left, and behind her. And finally she looked up. But Nilly was nowhere to be seen. Then the first bird cautiously started singing again. And that’s when it occurred to Lisa that she might never, ever see Nilly again and that that would actually be almost as sad as Anna having moved to Sarpsborg.
The Fartonaut
WHEN NILLY SAID “zero,” he felt an absolutely wonderful tickle in his stomach. It was as if the fart was a giant, burbling laugh that just had to get out. Sure, he had seen Lisa’s worried expression and Doctor Proctor coming running toward him, but he was so excited that it hadn’t occurred to him that something might be wrong. And when the bang came, it was so delightfully liberating that Nilly automatically shut his eyes. The previous farts had been short explosions, but this one was more drawn out, like when you let the air out of a balloon. Nilly laughed out loud because it felt just like he’d blasted off from the ground, like he was an astronaut who’d been shot up and propelled into space. He could feel the air rushing past his face and hair and it was as if his arms were being pressed in against his body. It felt totally real. And when Nilly finally opened his eyes, he discovered that it was very real in reality too. He blinked twice and then he understood that not only was it very real, it was utterly, incredibly real. It was as if he were sitting on a chair of air that was shooting upward. The blue sky arched above him, and below him he saw a big cloud of dust in what looked like a tiny copy of Doctor Proctor’s garden. The fart howled like a whole pack of wolves, and Nilly realized he was still going up, because the landscape down below was starting to look like a smaller and smaller version of Legoland.
Then the fart turned into a low rumbling, the chair of air disappeared from underneath him, and for just a second Nilly felt like he was totally weightless. A crow turned its head as it flew by, staring at him with astonished crow eyes.
Nilly tipped forward and then felt the descent begin. Headfirst. Slowly at first, then faster.
Uh-oh, Nilly thought, no longer finding any reason to smile. Hockey helmet or not, I’m never going to survive this.
Legoland got bigger and bigger, and with perilous speed it started to resemble the Cannon Avenue that Nilly had just left. And things very surely would have gone really badly for our friend Nilly if he hadn’t been such a quick-witted little guy and remembered what it was that had sent him up in the first place. Because although the fart was no longer howling like a pack of wolves and was now just a tame sputtering, it was still going. And remember that when I say sputtering, that’s compared to an enormous bang and not compared to one of your farts. Because even if you’ve been eating unripe apples and think you just farted the loudest fart anyone has ever farted, it would be considered a gentle breeze compared to the tamest sputtering caused by Doctor Proctor’s Fart Powder. Once Nilly had thought about all this, he swung himself quickly back into the sitting position he’d been in when he’d flown up. And once the seat of his pants, with the open Velcro flap, was pointed straight at the ground, to his relief he immediately started slowing down, thanks to the air pressure of the fart. But he also knew that the fart was going to be over soon and there was still a ways to go until he was back on the ground. Nilly tried as hard as he could to keep it going, because even a twenty-five-foot fall is very high for such a small boy. And that’s exactly how high he was above the ground when the fart finally came to an end.
“NILLY!” LISA YELLED.
“Nilly!” Doctor Proctor yelled. They were still looking around for him like crazy.
“Do you think the powder exploded him into smithereens?” Lisa asked.
“If so, the pieces must be so small that we can’t see them,” Doctor Proctor said, adjusting his motorcycle glasses and studying the ground where Nilly had been standing when the fart happened. All of the grass was torn up and there was a little pit there.
“We’re never going to see him again,” Lisa said. “And it’s my fault. I should’ve noticed that he was holding the tablespoon.”
“No, no. It’s my fault,” Doctor Proctor said, getting up again. “I should never have tinkered with the formula.”
“Nilly!” Lisa yelled.
“Nilly!” Doctor Proctor yelled.
“What’s all the commotion?” someone complained from over by the fence along the road. “And what are you doing here, Lisa? Dinner’s on the table.”
It was Lisa’s father, the Commandant. He looked gruff.
Doctor Proctor stood up. “My good sir, the whole situation is hopeless—,” he started, but was interrupted by a voice barking from behind the fence at Nilly’s house.
“What’s all the commotion?” It
was Nilly’s mother. She looked mad. “Dinner’s on the table. Has anyone seen Nilly?”
Doctor Proctor turned to face her. “My good ma’am, the whole situation is hopeless. You see, your son, Nilly, he … he …”
Then Doctor Proctor was interrupted for the third time, and this time by a high-pitched boy’s voice that came from above: “He’s sitting up here wondering what’s for dinner.”
All four of them looked up. And there, on top of Doctor Proctor’s roof, stood Nilly with his arms crossed, wearing a hockey helmet, knee pads, and leather pants with the bottom flapping around.
“Don’t move,” called Professor Proctor, running into the cellar.
“What in the world are you doing up there, Nilly?” his mother squealed.
“Playing hide-and-seek obviously,” Nilly said. “What’s for dinner?”
“Meatballs,” Nilly’s mother said to Nilly.
“Fish au gratin,” Lisa’s father told Lisa.
“Yippee!” said Nilly.
“Yippee!” said Lisa.
“You guys can go back to playing after dinner,” Lisa’s father growled.
“But not up there,” Nilly’s mother said. “Get down here right now.”
“Yes, Mom,” Nilly said.
The professor came running back out of the cellar with a ladder that he immediately leaned up against the wall of his house so that it was resting against the gutter. Nilly crawled to the ladder and then down the rungs, smiling and as proud as an astronaut climbing down from his spaceship after a successful landing following an expedition to somewhere in space where no one—or at least very few people—had ever been before him.
And three minutes later, which a little simple math can tell you is the same as a hundred and eighty seconds, Lisa was sitting with freshly washed, completely clean hands, eating fish au gratin, and Nilly, with pretty clean hands, was eating meatballs. Neither of them had ever eaten so fast before.
* * *
WHEN THEY GOT back to Doctor Proctor’s yard, the professor was sitting on the bench, reviewing everything as he jotted some things down and did some calculations on a piece of paper. Nilly looked at all the numbers and squiggles. This math wasn’t quite so simple.